My father and the fig tree:
A happy little poem about a child and their father. They (or at least the dad) are worshippers of Allah. The father really likes figs, so much he’d find a way to use figtrees in the bedtime stories he tells his child. They live in many houses through their lives and yet they never plant figtrees, even though they take care of other plants. Okra is also a tropical plant (I looked it up). The mother is mentioned as she comments how her husband starts but doesn’t finish ideas. The last time the father moves, he sings to his child a new song and shows them a planted figtree, with the fig of his dreams, clearly very happy.
Blood:
This family is arabic, and the father talks about “true arabs”, who can catch flies with their hands and believed in the healing properties of watermelon.
Years ago, a girl knocks and “wants to see the Arab” (the narrator’s father?), the narrator turns her away, saying they don’t have any arabs.
Father says his Arabic name is Shihab/shooting star, a name borrowed from the sky.
The narrator asks about the “borrowed” part, “when we die, we give it back?”. Their father says that’s what a true arab would say.
Present day, narrator is angry/surprised about a….possibly orphaned Palestinian child?
References the figs, says the child is a “homeless fig”, a tragedy with terrible roots too big.
They talk about flags, made of stone/seed or blue table mats (not sure about the meaning, very confused)
They call their father and they avoid talking about the news
Narrator drives out to the countryside, farmland (with sheep/cows) and ask themselves/nothing/a higher power? Things that i interpret to mean “who has the right to think themselves civilized? Where can a heart in pain heal? What would a true arab do now?
The words under the words
The narrator’s grandmother is very familiar with grapes, and used them to try and heal them from their fevers
They talk about how their grandmother is occupied with slowly patting round dough and baking break, waiting by the oven watching cars wondering if there are tourists or her lost family come to visit, how she knows when mail comes and the way she treasures and rereads rare letters over and over again
She says that nothing can surprise her anymore, whether it be a shotgun or a crippled baby. The narrator adds that she knows the silent messages people create, and she sends them out to the sky that plant themselves before the people will later die.
Their grandmother says that Allah is everywhere, in life/death/stories of foolishness and intelligence/her first thought/his name itself.
Two countries:
A poem about skin that represents something that knows when it is lonely, how long it has been since it had touched, how to move and react, but is unnoticed. Yet it is hopeful, and always tries to heal.
Love means you breathe in two countries (?? i have nothing)
Skin remembers being alone and is happy to have companionship
Arabic coffee:
“Us” liked their coffee as black and thick as it could get, and loved listening to their father tell them stories over coffee and having luck in their grounds
Their father would make the coffee by letting it boil up twice and calming down, no sugar, no broken dreams, no differences between people, coffee was the center of of talk and the center of the world in the room, a note of faith and “more”
My grandmother in the stars
“We” will not meet again on earth, a thought that causes the narrator’s throat to dry up and think how the sky is the only thing tying the entire universe altogether
The narrator wants to know “your” opinion of the neighbor’s horse, the village’s one cow. They clearly respect “you”, with rugged (old/weary?) feet and moth-eaten scarves (“you” is a woman)
“We” never live in once place, “our” hearts do all the talking we need, memory is the only thing that makes us rich.
